Measurements and metrics associated with online audiences, including exposure and advertising-related metrics, such as unique users, page views, an advertisement views, may be useful or needed, directly or indirectly, in various ways and by various parties, including measurement vendors and customers, advertisers, publishers, and advertising marketplace providers.
Census-based measurement techniques are very useful, but have limitations. For example, census-based measurements may be advantageous in that they have broad or full access to an entire network or other group of users served. However, census-based online audience measurements based on parameters such as cookies may be problematic in that it may not be possible through the network to determine, or determine accurately, the number of unique users represented by the cookie-based metrics.
Panel-based measurements may be derived from one or more panels of users, where a panel may be a subset of users that provide a source for observations that can be used to estimate parameters relating to a larger population, such as an online network-based audience. Panel-based measurements, while they may be accurate as to the subset of users, and a useful and important source for extrapolation and estimation, may suffer from issues or deficiencies such as a lack of alignment with the population being projected, such as when a panel, or its behavior, is not accurately representative or reflective of the larger projected population.
Given the above advantages and deficiencies, hybrid measurement techniques are increasingly emerging as a way to achieve better performance than panel-based measurement techniques alone or census-based measurement techniques alone, where a hybrid measurement technique may utilize aspects of or information derived from both panel-based and census-based measurement techniques.
However, hybrid techniques may have insufficiently limited, biased, or poorly calibrated information, leading to less than ideal associated hybrid technique performance or accuracy.
There is a need for improved hybrid audience-related measurement techniques.